The last week of November I gather together 24 books, one for each day in December leading up to Christmas day. I wrap the books and number them 1-24. Each night we open a book and read it together. Most of the books are Christmas related but sometimes they are not.
The first book we open on December 1st is always this one by Lisa Welchel, it's called the ADVENTure of Christmas. If you have followed my blog for awhile or know me personally you'll know that I will never stop singing the praises of this book! Last year when we read it on December 1st my youngest accepted the Lord Jesus as her Savior! Yesterday she has her 1st spiritual birthday! The book takes every single element of Christmas and turns it back to focus on Jesus. It talks about the history of why we celebrate the way we do and how many things came to be. There are also activities, crafts and recipes on many days. We simply LOVE it!
Another book we use year after year is called ADOREnaments. There are 12 ornaments each with a different name of Jesus on them. Then you read a small portion about that name when you put the ornament on the tree. The girls will open this on the 12th so they will put one on the tree each day leading up to Christmas Eve.
And this year we've started something new. I had always heard people talk about doing a Jesse tree and never really got it. This year we are blessed to have this wonderful {FREE} resource provided by Ann Voskamp's blog. I printed out the devotional pages and the ornaments and the girls and I got them all ready. We have a small tree we will hang them on and we'll be doing this for our Bible time for the month of December.
We also have a cute hanging snowman calendar where you move a small snowflake into a new pocket for each day in December. The girls take turns moving the snowflake.
And that's what we do. It's fun to have these yearly traditions and also to add new ones. I love that they help us focus on the true meaning of Christmas and the amazing gift that we've been given through Jesus Christ being born in Bethlehem.
2 comments:
I love that book too and totally forgot about it! IT's all packed up in the attic so I'll get it down this weekend! Better to start late than never. I think I'll keep items I want for Dec.1 a little more handy and ready to grab!! Live and learn!
Merry CHRISTmas!
You know, we have a whole stack of great Christmas books and every year I think "I want to wrap those, one for each day and read through them all". Then the next year comes and I promptly forget:( I love that idea though and one of these years I'm going to remember to do it! In fact, I think I'll go write that idea down in my Christmas notebook right now! Thanks for the reminder:)
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